Tales from the Journey of the Dead: Ten Thousand Years on an American Desert

17. The Georgia Green Story

195 17. The Georgia Green Story Out on the windswept flats of the Jornada they still tell the tale of how the God of Death once danced with the virgin bride. It happened at Fort Craig during the bloody Victorio’s War. In one of the fort’s large rooms a wedding party was in full swing. People were crowded everywhere, laughing and talking. A few children ran about. Men stood around smoking, while the women stole glances at the pretty bride dressed all in white. The musicians had just finished a song and were tuning their violins and guitars when the door swung open. From out of the burning desert there entered a ghastly figure dressed in black. The room fell deathly quiet. No one moved. The phantom swept across the room to the bride. He bowed ever so faintly, then took her hand. Later the members of the band said they did not know what possessed them, but they began to play. The dark specter took the young bride in his arms and stepped to the center of the room. The crowd stood transfixed as they began a slow waltz. He twirled her gracefully, but she fell limp in his bony arms. He held her a moment and gently let her body slide slowly to the floor. He stood at the lifeless form, then stepped back to the door and disappeared into the Jornada. Georgia Green never had a beau; she never married, but she too waltzed with the God of Death made manifest on the Jornada. This is no folktale, but the true story of a brave and unusual woman. When Georgia was born in 1925, one of her eyes was deformed. The pupil was much larger than normal. Nobody knew what to do. The 196 The Georgia Green Story hideous eye continued to swell. When Georgia was three years old doctors had no choice but to remove it. She soon lost the use of her other eye as well. Some say the cancer spread, others recall an accident or a childhood illness, but by age seven Georgia was virtually sightless. For the rest of her life she could only distinguish vague patterns of darkness and light. That same year, her family left Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for a homestead in the magnificent Magdalena Mountains at the edge of the Jornada. For the rest of her brief thirty-four years, Georgia lived without seeing the expansive desert landscape of her new home. Instead, she came to know the Jornada through the shape of sounds and the color of touch. She spent her girlhood on a 640-acre homestead at the mouth of Water Canyon. She helped with the cooking and, because she was so mindfully aware of everything around her, kept the house immaculately clean and tidy. On hot days she went outside and climbed down into the root cellar. There she sat in the fragrant, dark cool air peeling potatoes for the evening meal. Sometimes after supper her mother taught her Braille or her brother Bill read to her, but the best nights were when the family had a sing-along. They would sit on the porch in the deep, cool evening singing song after song while her mother played the accordion. Georgia’s mother, Abbie Lucina, was her eyes, her teacher, and her strength. Guided by Abbie’s strong and devoted hand, Georgia learned to face the world with confidence and skill. One day her mother handed the accordion to Georgia. ‘‘I’ll teach you,’’ she said. Georgia took to music with a passion. Before she started school that fall at the small, rural school in Magdalena, her nimble hands could fly faster than her mother’s. Soon she had memorized hundreds of songs. By the age of eleven, just before they left the homestead and moved into Socorro, she was playing at every dance in the area. She played the piano or accordion while brother Bill strummed the guitar. There wasn’t a song she didn’t know. Her favorite was ‘‘Home on the Range,’’ and her sweet, powerful voice caressed the lyrics like a cool breeze from those very skies that were not cloudy all day. The Georgia Green Story 197 The young girl – with one glass eye, the other eye always unfocused and drifting – stood out in Socorro like a sore thumb. Everyone knew her, although few knew...